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Troubles with Asus Micro ATX z87 boards - mostly a rant!

10e

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 28, 2008
Messages
778
Location
Markham, Ontario
Man, my luck lately has been all BAD. Part venting, part story

Had a Z87 Gryphon board to go with my admittedly sub-par, de-lidded overclocking 4770k. I decided to get into case mods and water cooling simultaneously and I dremel'd/modified a nice little Cooler Master N200 to support a 240mm radiator at the top and "w(h)et my chops" with some water cooling. A little inside....I know. Goulet.

So paired up with a set of GTX Titans with Swiftech Komodo water blocks I installed the board, the chip, 16GB (4x4GB) of some nice low profile Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz DDR3 and a Corsair AX760i PSU with pretty red custom cables into the chassis and went to work putting in my mostly NCIX and DAZmode procured items into this little jewel of a case. WC loop leak tested and passed with flying colors for 24+ hours. I was happy with this because my nice EK supremacy water block also supported the "naked precise mounting" setup which allows the Water block to directly interface with the die. A harrowing process to ensure I didn't poke any mobo socket pins, but I did it perfectly though painstakingly.

All this, only to find out the second PCI-E x16 slot was dead. Components would get power but the motherboard would not see them. Went through the involved process of draining the loop, removing the motherboard and cards and test the board with an EVGA GTX 660 Ti. Same result. The second PCI-E slot was basically dead. Even the Northbridge area under the System agent section of the BIOS showed me nothing in this slot. Normally it should show x8 or x16 if no card is installed in the first slot.

Unfortunately for me the backplate on the EVGA 660 TI board clipped one of the (too) closely placed clips on the near side of the DIMM slot and cracked the corner of the second DIMM slot clip. I still went ahead and RMA'd the board to the local Asus warranty/repair centre, who is now in process of voiding my nice 5 year warranty for this unrelated small bit of damage that actually happened after finding the issue with the slot.

Even worse, I tried an Asus Maximus VI gene which was an unmitigated disaster. It worked for two reboots, and the board then died a red death with a 00 Q-code which means CPU or mobo dead. The CPU was fine, but the board was not. This wasn't that bad, because it was easily returned to the retail store under their RMA warranty.

What ticks me off is my Asus Maximus V Gene has been an amazing board, as has been my older LGA 1366 Rampage III Gene (and Extreme) board, as has been every Asus board I've ever had except an Asus P5B Wifi Deluxe, until now.

So now I have to go to the warranty centre and I know I won't be in a good mood having to try and plead my case to them, trying to prove that the board was pooched prior to clipping the clip.

Any advice?

:bananafunky:

No more Asus Micro-ATX boards for me. I've learned my lesson. Back to Gigabyte or MSI for now. Maybe ASrock, though I fear their stuff too.
 

Dzzope

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Oct 15, 2010
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Irishman in Kiev, wOOoo, I'm an alien...
I would very politely but firmly tell the person your dealing with that you go through multiple builds a year and if it's not replaced you won't be a customer anymore for anything they sell and you use their stuff allot.

If that doesn't get you anywhere then they aren't worth trying to get anything out of and move on (like I did with gigabyte, have yet to personally see a board of theirs in a machine and not develop a fault)
 

3.0charlie

3.0 "I kill SR2's" Charlie
Joined
May 22, 2007
Messages
10,054
Location
Laval, QC
'luck with that. Asus refused a RMA for the same reason - broken ram clip while a few of the board's caps where clearly missing from the explosion and fire that entailed.

No more 'sus for mee too. Quite pleased with that MSI Mpower, actually.
 

Nodscene

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Joined
Dec 7, 2007
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1,020
Location
Toronto
Good companies are getting harder to find. I stay away from Gigabyte at all costs due to the cold boot problem that's been around for 10 years now. From what I can tell people have been pleased with Asus for the most part until recently (I just purchased one in the last year) but almost went with the ASRock as they are getting great reviews (MSI too for that matter). Motherboard world may be changing.
 

IRQ Conflict

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
Messages
1,806
Location
Drayton Valley, AB
Sad to hear. My Asus Rampage Formula has been a stellar board for years. I may be going with an MSI Mpower or Mpower MAX. I believe AkG is using the Mpower X and recommends them. Though, I think I may just be going with MSI for a colour change. :biggrin:
 

10e

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 28, 2008
Messages
778
Location
Markham, Ontario
Well I assumed that it was that broken clip, but you know what happens when one assumes. This time I'm the @$$.

Apparently a PCI-E slot pin is bent. I'm not sure how this happened, I'm very careful with stuff, so I'm taking the board back and going to try and fix it myself, otherwise I have to pay $120.00 + $20.00 freight + taxes, ie. almost the price of a new board.

Still ticked about my bad luck, which also included a dead 3770K, which did 4.9 Ghz with 1.33 volts, so it's been a bad couple of weeks, but now I can proceed with my build now that I've gotten my second 280mm radiator from DazMode. Hopefully with a new BIOS and updated microcode I can get a lower power OC on my pitiful 4770K on this board.

C'est la vie and thanks for the advice, guys.

I also just picked up an AMD FX-9370 that I will be playing with on my virtual box with WC coming too. NCiX had them on special for $249.99 which is only $40 or $50.00 more than the 8350.

So much fun, so little time.
 

KaptCrunch

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Joined
Feb 23, 2008
Messages
4,382
Location
Ontario
Apparently a PCI-E slot pin is bent. I'm not sure how this happened, I'm very careful with stuff, so I'm taking the board back and going to try and fix it myself, otherwise I have to pay $120.00 + $20.00 freight + taxes, ie. almost the price of a new board.

So much fun, so little time.


when you get it home use a safety pin that is thick as square hole on slot top, incert @ 45 angle

push towards center of slot to re-arch pin
 

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3.0charlie

3.0 "I kill SR2's" Charlie
Joined
May 22, 2007
Messages
10,054
Location
Laval, QC
Wut? Unless you use on purpose an ice pick, how in the world can you bend a PCI-e slot pin? They're all fully enclosed in their plastic shells...
 

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